


A waltz on knife's edge

by deusreks



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Set in Canon timeline but Oikawa can do a thing that isn't possible in hq!! universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 11:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7100467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deusreks/pseuds/deusreks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kisses and what comes after.<br/></p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Iwaizumi looks out of it so we came to ask what you did,” Matsukawa says.</p>
  <p>“You guys always blame me. Maybe it’s not me this time!”</p>
  <p>“Is it you?” Hanamaki asks, leaning over the desk with disinterested eyes as if he already knows the answer and it’s a bother to ask at all.</p>
  <p>Tooru thumbs at his wrist and pouts like a child denied.</p>
  <p>“...Yes.”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	A waltz on knife's edge

Tooru trails after Hajime, eyeing the tense line of his shoulder and the stubborn lift of his chin as he refuses to meet him head-on. It vexes him. This doesn’t happen to them, but to some characters straight out of a poorly written tv-drama he hears his classmates chat about during recess. He rushes his step and falls in line with Hajime, their shoulders almost touching but Tooru doesn’t dare.

Scratching his wrist, he whines, “Iwa- _chan_ , how long will you stay mad at me? I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t follow me.” A typical Hajime-like response. Tooru isn’t swayed.

“Ah, you didn’t say for how _long_!”

“I’m not angry.”

“You definitely are. I can tell. Your eyebrows have become one.”

Hajime interrupts their routine when he comes to an abrupt halt, out of habit, and grabs the front of Tooru’s perfectly ironed shirt, pulling him upwards but not towards himself. He holds him there, Tooru lifting his hands up as a sign of surrender, also something borne out of habit.

“Oikawa I _swear_ —“

None of this would’ve happened if Hajime weren’t cast as the prince of his class for their cultural festival event. _Hajime is great, Hajime is handsome, Hajime will attract the crowd to their ball_. Tooru had heard many variations of the same thing that day and when he found Hajime, he found him by the vending machine looking devastated like he travelled the world inside of a tornado and only landed here five minutes ago.

“I can’t dance,” Hajime confessed. Hajime who can beat anyone at arm-wrestling, running, swimming—you name it and Hajime will own it. _Hajime can’t dance_. It was Tooru’s little secret, knowing this when nobody else did; it was a part of Hajime that he loved between sighs of admiration from Hajime’s peers at every feat Hajime had successfully performed.

“Calm down, you have me,” Tooru reassured, a hand on Hajime’s shoulder.

In the privacy of Tooru’s room, Hajime let loose of his tie and heaved such a troubled sigh for somebody _didn’t_ have to deal with a teenage boy who couldn’t hold half a beat. Tooru scrunched his nose at his tie that pooled like a snake at the base of his bed as if it ended up there by a different arrangement of events.

Tooru didn’t allow himself to dream too much. This was a day like any other.

“I’ll teach you the classics,” he said, opening his arms and beckoning Hajime closer. “Those you won’t be able to screw up.”

Hajime’s closed in on him like a beast on a prowl and stomped on his foot with the grace of a brute. Which wasn’t much grace at all.

“Ouch, Iwa- _chan_.”

“My bad.” There wasn’t a semblance of apology in Hajime’s words. But that was alright, Tooru didn’t need his apologies.  

With plethora of plausible excuses on his sleeve, he put his hand on Hajime’s hip and taught him how to do the same. He was patient. Years of dancing around Hajime and the boundaries of their friendship was one of the reasons he was so good at this. And why Hajime wasn’t.

_A waltz on knife’s edge_. That was the most dramatic a title he could think of as Hajime edged closer and looked down at their feet to make sure he wouldn’t step on Tooru’s. His nose brushed the underside of Tooru’s chin and when he lifted his head, his lips were within the reach of Tooru’s. 

So Tooru reached for them.

Hajime turned to stone.

For a second.

And then he was kissing back.

It didn’t stop there. Tooru’s hand was in Hajime’s hair; Hajime’s hand was everywhere.

Tooru’s heart was a wild, messy thing; a needle of a clock stuttering around the same hour for eternity. He didn’t mind. It was an hour during which Hajime was holding the back of his neck; was touching the hair there; was pulling him closer; was drawing shapes on his lower back with his fingers.

When they pulled away, there was a sound, almost like a tear of canvas, and Hajime’s face drained of all colour but a rosy pink that matched his _kissed_ lips.

Then, horror.

He pushed Tooru away by the shoulders and avoided looking in his eyes.

“Sorry, Iwa-chan.” Tooru felt like he needed to say something or else it would end like this. “I didn’t mean—“

“I have to go.”

Hajime forgot to take his tie as he stormed out.

All of that brought them to this awkward tug of sleeves and averted eyes.

“I got carried away. You too. It happened the heat of the moment.,” Tooru explains. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Hajime lets go, leaving Tooru’s shirt crumpled.

“Don’t follow me.”

 

Tooru’s always been aware how easy it is to spot when there’s a wedge threatening to tear their friendship apart, even more so when Matsukawa and Hanamaki slide into his classroom and all but intimidate the guy sitting in front of Tooru to go elsewhere for the time being.

“Iwaizumi looks out of it so we came to ask what you did,” Matsukawa says.

“You guys _always_ blame me. Maybe it’s not _me_ this time!”

“ _Is_ it you?” Hanamaki asks, leaning over the desk with disinterested eyes as if he already knows the answer and it’s a bother to ask at all.

Tooru thumbs at his wrist and pouts like a child denied.

“...Yes.”

Hanamaki snaps his fingers at him. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“So you can’t tell us what you did,” Matsukawa concludes.

“It must be bad,” Hanamaki adds. They’re annoying and in unison, which is a terrible combination.

“How bad is it?” Matsukawa asks.

Tooru didn’t think this far. He touched his lips when he went to bed last night and decided to worry about it when he woke. He angsted over breakfast and felt guilty when he went to pick up Hajime only to find Hajime’d already left without him. He mulled it over on his way to school and concluded Hajime doesn’t just kiss people on the mouth, let alone his friends, so he must’ve felt something. It was _something_ they had to talk about; Tooru wanted to talk about it. But it’s hard to talk to a man on a run.

And even when he finally caught him, Tooru went and said the wrong thing.

“Pretty bad,” he admits.

 

Hajime keeps this game of cat and mouse going effortlessly. One day turns into two. Two turn into three. And on the fourth day, Hanamaki puts his hand on Tooru’s shoulder and says, “This needs to stop.”

Tooru agrees. But Hajime is a fast and persistent runner and Tooru never had to chase him - he was always right there by his side.

Hanamaki chews his straw to ruin and continues speaking around it, “but now we finally know who would get whom if you and Iwaizumi had a divorce.”

He’s talking about Matsukawa who is keeping Hajime company as they speak.

“Not funny, Makki,” Tooru chastises, pinching at his wrist.

Hanamaki raises an eyebrow at him so he rolls his eyes with exasperation.

“A _little_ funny,” he admits.

*** * ***

Tooru has somehow slipped from sitting upwards on the couch to resting his head on his mother’s soft lap. She’s combing his hair with her gentle fingers while he is stroking his wrist in silence and watches the TV, though his thoughts are elsewhere.

“What’s on your mind, Tooru?” She asks.

“Should I tell you? I can always rewind if you don’t like what you hear.”

He drags his eyes across the _kanji_ for number one sitting high on his wrist and smooths his thumb over it.

“Well, if you want to use the one rewind I saved for you, go ahead.” She squishes his cheek and smiles playfully like she doesn't feel sorry at all for only leaving him one rewind after bragging about how their family had a million of them in the beginning and their wrists held numbers that clung to their skin like an ink bracelet.  

Tooru sighs. 

In response to his silence, his mother brushes the hair out of his eyes, exposing his face to her knowing stare.

“Hajime hasn’t come over in days,” she says. And she’s right.

“I kissed him.” 

Tooru’s confession isn’t as dramatic as he’d planned it to be. His heart rate is steady, his palms dry. His mother makes everything feel easier than it really is.

“I was wondering when you’d stop being in denial,” she says, voice kind and soothing. “My money was on _never_ , though.”

“Ah. You knew.”

“Am I not your mother?”

“What a sneaky mother.”

Her mouth abandons smiling.

“Thinking about rewinding?”

“I don’t know,” Tooru sighs. Again. “You only left me _one_ rewind. I want to save it for something-- something I can’t fix on my own.”

Her smile returns.

“There’s your answer then.”

*** * ***

Tooru touches up on his fringe before he leaves the house determined to tackle Hajime in the middle of the street if he has to – because he _will_ talk to him.

He steps out of the house.

He forgets what he wanted to say.

“Iwa-chan...?”

Hajime is standing in front of the gate, hands in his pockets, shoulders easy and relaxed underneath his uniform. He meets Tooru’s gaze, something eerily composed and resolved lurking in his eyes.

“I thought about what you said and realized you’re right.”

Tooru nods and _mhm_ ’s.

“Besides, Matsukawa kept going about some divorce and how hard it is on the children.”

Another nod. Another _mhm_.

“So are we good?”

_Mhm_.

It’s so easy to fall into step with Hajime. There’s enough space between them to fit another person but that’s for the best. Tooru’s pulse is ready to break his skin and he doesn’t want Hajime to know.

“You just need somebody to teach you to dance without revealing your secret to the world,” Tooru teases. He wants to nudge Hajime, like he usually would, but his elbow can’t reach him. He closes his palm around his left wrist instead.

“I have three days and it’s hopeless.”

“It’s not.” Tooru turns to him, smiles, offers him his finest peace sign. Says, “you have me.”

 

“Finally,” Matsukawa says when Tooru joins them at lunch and sits down next to Hanamaki. Because on Hanamaki’s other side is Hajime and he’s munching on his food with his eyes closed.

“Who fixed it?” Matsukawa asks but Tooru is too busy watching a crumb stuck to the corner of Hajime’s lip.

“Iwaizumi, of course,” Hanamaki concludes instead and Tooru doesn’t miss how Hajime stays quiet.

He crosses his arms and stares daggers at both of them. “You guys are literally the worst.”

 

When Hajime comes over again, Tooru spends most of the time demonstrating the movements for him while dancing with an imaginary partner. Imaginary partner is good. Imaginary partner is safe.

Hajime sits on Tooru’s bed, the ankle of his left leg resting on his right knee. He watches with purpose; he watches in a way that makes sweat cover the back of Tooru’s neck. It is awkward. He feels that if he steps a little closer, this fragile little consensus will break. For a second he thinks about what he wanted to say this morning but draws a blank.

He stops thinking altogether when Hajime gets up and approaches him, hand reaching out.

“Okay,” Tooru says and takes it. “Left leg back first. Back straight. Look over there,” he instructs and tries to sound as detached as possible. Hajime heeds his every word. Their bodies do not touch anywhere beside their hands.

He lets Hajime lead and Hajime does, hesitant at first, but with a little guidance his confidence grows and he sets a decent pace. Tooru looks at him and he sees traces of his old Hajime, the one before chaos entered their friendship. 

His concentration breaks when he looks at his wrist and thinks about taking it all back after all; back to when he knew Hajime like the palm of his hand knows a ball. Now he can’t even tell what he’s thinking. And he doesn’t dare ask.

“Is this good?” Hajime’s raspy whisper sends shivers down Tooru’s spine.

“It’s good,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”

*** * ***

He ends up being only _moderately_ fine.

“You’re too stiff,” Tooru mouths soundlessly at Hajime who is dressed up to the nines in his princely attire and dancing with the princess of their class. The classroom is gorgeous, meticulously decorated to look as close to a royal ball as possible. But the grandeur of the classroom would be nothing if Hajime weren’t in it.

Hajime gives him a panicked look over the princesses’ shoulders. The look is so subtle that nobody besides Tooru notices. And Hajime’s not bad per se – he’s got the steps down to perfection – but he can’t seem to relax. He twirls the lithe princess and catches her over his arm. A few _ah’s_ and _whoa’s_ pass through the audience and then Hajime’s eyes, those damn eyes, meet Tooru’s for a split second and--

Tooru moves towards them before he can stop himself.

He gently picks up the girl and pulls her away from Hajime. There is no sound around them anymore.

“M’lady,” Tooru addresses her as he presses a kiss on her pretty, soft hands. She flushes and gives a polite bow before she steps away.

“You’re too stiff,” Tooru says, turning to Hajime and takes his hands only to guide them on his hip and shoulder like he did when they were alone. Hajime doesn’t complain. He’s watching him behind dark eyes, half-lidded and undecipherable.

They start cutting through the silence of the classroom.

“The prince breaks off his marriage and elopes with the prince from a neighbouring kingdom,” Hanamaki narrates loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Scandalous,” Matsukawa adds.

And it turns into a joke.

But they don’t understand.

They don’t understand that when Tooru’s holding Hajime’s hand he’s holding the world. They don’t understand that he’s barely touching Hajime yet every part of his body is aflame. They don’t understand that all he has to do is lean in and ruin everything twice in a span of few days. They don’t understand that Tooru could kiss him right here and break his own heart for the world to see and then rewind and live with the horror of that moment forever.

They don’t understand because neither do the two of them understand.

Their dance ends. Cold sweat runs down Tooru’s face but he masks his discomfort. “That’s how it’s done,” he exclaims and presses a hand to his heart, turning to their audience like a sincere royalty would. “You should’ve chosen _me_ as your prince!”

“You don’t even go here!” Somebody shouts and the classroom explodes in laughter.

He doesn’t notice how hard he’s been holding onto Hajime’s hand until Hajime has to claw it out of his own.

*** * ***

Tooru tosses and turns in his bed, making a fine mess of his covers and dropping all his alien plushies on the floor. He leaves them there, thinks of them as a metaphor for his chaotic inner state. His phone is on the night stand and he grabs it, the bright screen offending his eyes. It’s past one in the morning but tomorrow is Saturday and he hopes he can be forgiven for dialing Hajime’s number.

When he picks up, Hajime’s voice is low, husky, too close to his ear.

“The fuck.” 

 

“Iwa-chan, want to watch the end of the world with me?”

“How about I end _you_?”

“I planned something more romantic than first-degree murder.”

There’s a silence long enough to kill a heartbeat.

Hajime sighs. Tooru imagines his breath tickling his ears.

“Oikawa. The _fuck_.”

Tooru takes it as admission of defeat. He says, “meet me outside in five.”

 

There’s an abandoned hospital building, a 10-minute-bike ride away, that’s been set up for demolition for as long as Tooru can remember and they reach its roof via emergency stairs. Tooru unfastens his old blanket from his bike and spreads it over the floor stained in dust and cracks. He doesn’t lie down yet but instead greets the night sky, scattered here and there with flickering stars.

As he leans over the edge of the roof, a hand slides across his back and he shudders into the touch. Hajime comes to stand next to him and doesn’t move his hand. 

“I’m not six anymore, Iwa-chan. I know I can’t fly,” Tooru says and remembers when Hajime smacked him on the head for standing on the balcony railing and thinking about taking off only to rewind just before he hit the ground. It would’ve been worth it, or so he thought at the time.

“I never know with you,” Hajime says.

_The same goes for me._

The night is cold and quiet so Tooru sinks into his sweater and enjoys it for what it is. Hajime’s hand is still on his back, its presence growing heavier. It’s the same hand he had desperately tried to remove from Tooru’s. Except now nobody can see. 

“So.” Hajime’s voice is drowsier than before. “When is the meteor shower supposed to start?”

“Let me see.” Tooru checks his phone and Hajime draws closer to look over his shoulder. A strange sensation washes over Tooru; Hajime doesn’t smell like the soap he showered with, or like sweat, or like autumn air. He smells like _Hajime_. Just Hajime; a mix of memories of bruised knees, and endless summers tangled in his hair, and _home_.

“It says October the 20th,” Hajime says, his hot breath grazing Tooru’s cheek.

Tooru comes to. “Yeah.”

“Today is October 25th,” Hajime says it matter-of-factly. 

“Oh.” Oikawa mumbles. “I guess the world isn’t ending.”

“I _guess_ we’re going with first-degree murder after all.”

“I’m sorry Iwa-chan—“

Hajime takes a few steps back and drops down on the blanket, legs outstretched and eyes pointed towards the sky. Wind ruffles his messy hair and Tooru smiles into the sleeve of his sweater, suddenly finding their anticlimactic reaction to _whatever-this-was-supposed-to-be_ hilarious. He sits down next to Hajime and pulls his legs to his chest.

“Hey Iwa-chan, if you could rewind time only once, when would you do it?”

“That’s random.”

“Just answer, please.”

“I’d use it when you overwork yourself and end up seriously hurt. I’d go back in time and kick your ass.”

“That’s very brutish of you.”

“Oikawa, I swear—“

“I’d save it for when you head butt me so hard your skull cracks open.”

“Thanks.”

Hajime is grinning, he can tell just from the way he breathes a little different to accommodate a smile, so Tooru shines his face with the screen of his phone. Hajime squints and protects his eyes with his hand.

“What the hell—“

They would be so good if not for _ifs_ and fears; _so_ good if Tooru could hold Hajime’s hand and make him pliant with kisses and leave all excuses elsewhere, and even _better_ if Hajime would call him _Shittykawa_ and kiss him back and tell him that nothing is ruined and that there’s nothing to fear, nothing at all—

“Oikawa?” The concern coating Hajime’s words is palpable.

“I take it back,” Oikawa says, his heart in his throat. He can’t stop his phone from falling out of his hand. Neither can he stop the tears. “I would turn back time if you tell me you don’t love me.”

Tooru bites his lip because its trembling and he can’t speak around it. He’s so terrified of his feelings that he can’t look into Hajime’s eyes; afraid of what he’d find there or afraid he’d retreat.

“I don’t want to live in a world in which I heard you say you don’t love me.” He claws at his wrist and forces the words out one by one. He’s going to do it. He meets Hajime’s eyes; they’re wide and awake and listening. He says, “Iwa-chan. I love you.”

His tears are so persistent that Hajime is only a blur in the dark. His nails dig into the skin of his wrist. Hajime doesn’t say anything for the longest time and Tooru’s wrist is aching and he wants to stop crying and go back—

“Oikawa, leave your wrist.” Hajime’s voice is close, his shape now right before Tooru’s eyes. He takes hold of Tooru’s wrists and pins them down but he keeps trying to set them free. “ _Oikawa_.”

When Tooru stops struggling, alarmed by the urgency in Hajime’s tone, Hajime relaxes his grip but doesn’t let go. Tooru’s chest feels warm and tight but his face is cold and wet with tears.  

“Oikawa,” Hajime calls as though he knows Tooru will go if he doesn’t remind him he’s here. “It didn’t just _happen_ in the heat of the moment. It meant something.”

Tooru nods while he searches for his voice. It’s hard to speak, but he pushes the words out. “It meant something, Iwa-chan. Of course it did. I just told you, didn’t I—”

“I love you too,” Hajime says. The time around them slows, the silence around them growing a body in the shape of Tooru’s heart. Hajime squeezes his hands. “I was afraid of you and afraid of this so I ran and—It doesn’t matter. We’re here.”

“Iwa-chan, we have to properly talk about it.”

“I want to kiss you.”

“You can’t.” He sniffles and huffs an exhausted little laugh. “My face is only ninety-nine percent perfect right now.”

Hajime slides his hands up Tooru’s arms, leaving persistent shivers in their wake, and comes to cup his tear-stained face. He bumps their foreheads together. His eyes are fixed on Tooru’s mouth. He licks his lips and Tooru’s heartbeat flutters like it’s the first time they’re close like this.

Hajime’s thumb glides over Tooru’s upper lip to wipe away tears and snot. “Gross,” he murmurs, inching so close that Tooru can taste his breath.

“I told you.”

This doesn’t stop him. He kisses Tooru like he doesn’t care for parts of him that are messy and salty and unsightly. His thumbs caress Tooru’s cheeks and he gladly welcomes him into his mouth.

Tooru slides his hand to the nape of Hajime’s neck and climbs into his lap so he can kiss him more, ask for more.

Hajime bites into Tooru’s lip and nibbles on it before he lets go.

Tooru falls into Hajime, resting his dizzy head on Hajime’s shoulder. “I’m going to fall asleep,” he mumbles.

“We should get going.” Hajime’s mouth moves over his shoulder.

“Let’s stay like this.”

“No. I’m getting up.”

Tooru doesn’t let go and, despite his efforts to keep them down, Hajime manages to pull himself up with Tooru still clinging to him.

“Are we _really_ doing this, Oikawa?” He’s rubbing circles into Tooru’s back with his fists, without much force. Tooru knows Hajime is a big softie and it feels good to be on the receiving side of it.

“Yes” Tooru hums.

There’s a soft, bubbly feeling upsetting his stomach right now and he welcomes it as something dear to him.

“Iwa-chan.” That’s all he murmurs into Hajime’s ear.

Hajime kisses his shoulder. “I know. Me too.”

*** * ***

Tooru’s mother is clearing the kitchen table after breakfast when he comes downstairs, rubbing at his eyes and yawning.

“Tooru, where did you go last night?” She asks.

“Ah. You knew.”

“Am I not your mother?”

He takes a bowl she’s left for him. He didn’t realize how hungry he was until he smelled the food, though it’s cold by now.

“I went to watch the end of the world with Hajime. But it didn’t happen.”

She rubs his back. “I’m glad.”

Tooru grins. “Me too.”

He pecks her cheek and drags himself back to his room upstairs. He leaves the bowl on his desk and decides to air his room first. When he got home last night, he fell into his bed all sweaty and now the room smells. The smell is a mix of a bicycle race home at half past two in the morning and asphalt and kisses over the gate of his house.

He opens the doors to the balcony. Because he spots his beloved patch of pointy, black hair he steps outside. Hajime is leaning on the railing of his balcony, his face a little pallid in the late morning sun.

“How come you’re awake?” Tooru approaches his own railing and stretches his arms on it like he’s preparing to leap over it and onto Hajime’s balcony. He knows it’s impossible.

“I didn’t sleep a wink.” Hajime’s eyes are sharp and focused despite his lazy morning drawl. “I couldn’t.”

“And why is that?”

“I want to kiss you.”

Tooru should start getting used to this. He yearned for it for so long without allowing himself a sliver of hope and now that he has it, he keeps tripping over the minutest displays of affection.

“Somebody is hungry,” he teases with his usual relaxed confidence even though he’s smitten and jittery all over.

“Yeah.”

Tooru finds his cheeks growing hot at the easy confession.

“Iwa-chan.”

“I’m coming over,” Hajime decides on his own and pushes himself away from the railing only to disappear into his room.

Tooru takes a moment to breathe and then sinks to his knees, buriying his face into his arm.

He’s dead certain his mother will know why Hajime has come over so early, so eager.

Somehow, he doesn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to like giving Oikawa a cool power that is of no use to him whatsoever. Sorry, Tooru [I give you Hajime in the end so we're good--kinda] I hope you enjoy!


End file.
